Some experts will tell you newspapers are doomed.

They may be premature.

Lexington County may be an exception to such gloom.

Our county lost The Chap-in Times last year but is still served by 10 locally-owned and operated print and online newspapers.

The Twin City News in Batesburg-Leesville is owned by the Bruner family.

The Lake Murray, Irmo, Cayce-West Columbia and Gaston-Swansea News are published by Kirk Luther.

The digital Chapin News and Irmo Times are published by former Chapin Mayor Stan Shealy.

The digital Lexington Ledger is owned and published by former Chronicle journalist Paul Kirby’s family.

The Lexington County Chronicle & Dispatch-News – the county’s oldest newspaper will be 150 years old this year – and The Lake Murray Fish Wrapper are owned by our family.

All of us appreciate our community’s loyal support.

That isn’t true elsewhere.

Since the internet arrived in earnest 25 years ago, almost nobody has figured out a sustainable way to continue producing local news.

Much of what you read here about newspapers and their owners was reported by the Washington Post. It is owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

We are publishing it to stimulate thought about the future of our communities if newspapers fail.

Local news lost

America lost a quarter of its journalists from 2008 to 2018, the vast majority of them covering local news, according to University of North Carolina professor Penny Muse Abernathy. Newsrooms lost at least 3,800 jobs in 2019 alone.

She estimates the country has lost 2,100 newspapers since 2004, 70 of them dailies. She has begun referring to about 1,000 survivors as “ghost papers” because of their painfully thin staffs.

She calls places with few or no reporters “news deserts” with little local news.

Is bigger better?

The merger of Gannett, owner of The Greenville News and WLTX here, is merging with another mega-publisher, GateHouse.

It may test if local news can be saved by large companies with deeper pockets.

The Washington Post says chains such as McClatchy, which owns The State newspaper, are fighting for life.

They try for enough news that readers will subscribe online, but at a low cost.

Although people trust local more than nationally-owned ones, only 14% of the public pays for local news, according to the Pew Research Center.

The chief executives of McClatchy and Gannett with more than 700 newspapers reaching more than 12 million subscribers, agreed to interviews with The Washington Post to share their thoughts on the future.

McClatchy works to

stave off bankruptcy

McClatchy owns regional newspapers such as The State, Rock Hill Herald and Myrtle Beach Sun News.

Overall it owns 47 newspapers, including 30 dailies. It also lost almost $400 million in the last 12 months.

McClatchy CEO Craig For-man, a former journalist, said his company’s growth in digital subscribers shows it has an “essential commitment to our communities.”

Forman is exploring partnerships such as a website project with Google in Youngstown, Ohio.

The daily newspaper, the Vindicator, announced in June that it was closing.

Forman said he is pleased with the results so far.

“The future has to be a collaboration,” he said.

“You can’t just depend on any one thing.”

McClatchy has other challenges, namely $5 billion in debt and a pension fund obligated by $535 million that the company has asked the federal government to take.

Through cost-cutting and other measures, Forman has brought the debt down to $700 million, but many analysts still expect it to file for bankruptcy this year.

New Gannett: Build

local connections

New Gannett CEO Paul Bascobert just joined the nation’s largest publisher of local news. It needs $300 million in annual savings and carries an expensive private equity loan.

Gannett’s merger with GateHouse Media created a conglomerate with 613 newspapers, among them USA Today, The Greenville News and 260 other dailies.

The Gannett board welcomed Bascobert after a hostile takeover bid by Alden Global Capital.

Alden cuts newspapers it controls savagely. As a result, employees of the Denver Post, one of the papers under its control, protested at the corporate offices after its staff was sliced from 350 to fewer than 100.

Bascobert says he doesn’t aim to strip Gannett for parts. He aims to create a sustainable business.

That leaves open the question of what happens to local news when there is no local newspaper to cover it?

So far, Lexington County is fortunate with 10 locally-owned newspapers.

Is that the future?

Will only those locally owned and operated by families who live in and contribute to community needs be the lone survivors?

You will help decide.